At one o’clock, Clark peeked into my office. “I’m going to run to the cafeteria for lunch. Do you want anything?”
I tore my eyes from my computer screen. “No, I’m all right.”
He leaned against the door. “You don’t look all right. Why don’t you come with me? It will be good for you to get out of the office, away from the place of execution.”
“I wish you’d stop calling it that.”
He grinned. “So, how about it?”
“All right. Can Miller come too?”
“Naw, he already left. He usually goes home for lunch. Poor guy is pretty shaken up.”
I gave him a pained expression. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Don’t worry about it. Miller will be fine by Monday. Now, let’s go.”
Clark and I walked in companionable silence across the green to the cafeteria, which was located directly across from Dennis. The only students on campus were volleyball and soccer athletes here for practice. Harshberger was too small for a football team. The students elbowed each other as they moved down the line to fill their trays. At twenty four, I was only a few years older, but felt worlds away. The teams sat together on the far side of the cafeteria close to the entrance to the college bookstore.
Staff and faculty dotted the rest of the large room. None of them seemed to relish their meals. The culinary options were a salad bar that could double as a biology experiment—I bypassed that—greasy pizza, or overcooked hamburgers and limp french fries. I settled on the hamburger and fries, hoping a thick layer of ketchup would overpower the burnt taste.
Clark was already seated at a table by a window that overlooked the gymnasium and student dorms when I paid for my lunch. As a staff member, the whole meal only cost me two dollars, so it certainly had price in its favor. I slipped into the beige plastic molded seat across from Clark.
Clark sawed his hamburger in half with a white plastic knife. “What do you think of the food?”
“Well . . .”
He laughed. “You don’t have to pretend to like it. No one does. When the semester starts, it will be fifty percent better. Notice I didn’t say one hundred percent. However, fifty is a marked improvement.”
After slathering the burger with ketchup, I took a bite. It tasted like charcoal dipped in ketchup. I set it back on the ceramic plate.
Clark put down his burger. Despite his complaints about the meal, most of the burger and fries were gone. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” I popped a soggy fry in my mouth, swallowing hard to force it down my throat.
“How long are you going to be here?” Clark squinted in the sunbeam that cut through the window. The legs of his chair made a horrible screeching sound as he scooted away from the glare.
“What do you mean?”
“Dean Klink may look harmless, but he’s done this many times before.”
“Done what?”
“Restructured a department.” He made quotation marks with his fingers when he said “restructured.” “Not that firing Joel was wrong. The dude had a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore.”
“Joel wasn’t fired,” I corrected. “He was let go,”
“Whatever. We knew when our old boss resigned that it was just a matter of time for us.” He sipped from a paper cup. “Klink hires some young hotshot like you—someone who won’t be here too long—to take over a department.
“Then the hotshot leaves for bigger and better things, and the department is how Dean Klink wants it. Now he hires the person he really wanted for the job because having fired one or two people means he can now afford the expert with more experience.”
The bite of french fry lodged in my throat. I took a big gulp of water.
“So how long are you going to be here?”
I didn’t answer right away.
“Your silence is all the answer I need.” He popped another fry into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “What, one year? Two years?”
“I don’t know.” After meeting the Troyer family, leaving after two years didn’t sound as good as it once did.
He wiped mustard off his chin. “At least Miller and I know what to expect.”
I leaned forward, unable to eat another bite. “Are you going to tell Miller about this conversation?”
He thought for a long minute while dragging the tip of his knife along the rim of his plate. “Naw. The kid is spooked enough as it is.”
“Can I ask you a question now?”
He nodded.
“What can I do to make it better for you guys at work?”
He dropped a french fry. “No one has asked me that before.”
I pushed my plate away. I would eat the lunch that Becky packed for me when I got back to my office.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”
I gave him a nod. “Ask Miller to think about it too.”
AT A QUARTER AFTER two, I waited at the entrance to Harshberger, checking my cell phone for the time every few minutes. Will the girl from the bakery show? I wished I knew her name.
“Miss Humphrey?”
I turned to find the girl from the bakery. “I’m so glad you came.”
She nodded, her expression shy. She was still wearing her apron from the bakery. A smudge of chocolate marked her pocket. She picked at it with her thumbnail.
“Do you want to sit down?” I pointed to a bench.
She glanced inside the college’s grounds. “No, I can’t stay long. My brother will be showing up to the bakery soon to take me home.”
“I’m Chloe.” I held out my hand. She squeezed my fingers but didn’t shake my hand. “What’s your name?”
“Sadie Hooley.”
“What did you want to tell me, Sadie?”
“I haven’t seen Becky in awhile, not since she left home. My family wouldn’t like it if they thought I was talking to her.” She adjusted her glasses. “But I know Becky and know she could never hurt anyone, especially Bishop Glick. Some of our customers at the bakery say it wasn’t an accident. They think Becky hit the bishop’s buggy on purpose. I know that’s not true.”
“I know it would mean a lot to Becky to hear you say that.”
“Can you tell her for me? I can’t talk to her. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
“I will,” I promised.
“You came to the bakery to talk to Esther.”
I nodded.
“Esther and Becky don’t get along. They never have, even when we were in school. It has always been over Isaac.” She picked at the chocolate smear on her apron.
“Does Esther plan to marry Isaac?”
Sadie nodded. “She always planned to marry Isaac, even when he was courting Becky.”
“Isaac courting Becky must have made Esther mad.”
Sadie laughed. “It made her furious. I don’t know how many times I had to hear her rant about Becky in the bakery. Once I told her she should be more upset with Isaac because he chose Becky over her. She didn’t talk to me for a week after, which was a relief really. Esther can talk a person’s ear off, especially if she’s angry.”
“Could Esther be angry enough to want to hurt someone?”
Sadie removed her glasses and cleaned the lenses on her apron. “No.”
“Then why are you telling me this?”
She thought a moment. “Esther can be bristly, even short with people, but I know she could never hurt anyone just as I know that Becky couldn’t. I wanted to talk to you to tell you that. It’s the truth, no matter what you might hear around town.”
“Are there rumors going around about her?”
Sadie shrugged. “People coming into the bakery like to talk. It doesn’t matter if they are Amish or Englisch. They want the news, and the biggest news in town now is the bishop’s passing.”
“Thank you for telling me, Sadie.”
“I should go. My brother must be waiting for me.”
I nodded.
She placed her glasses back on her nose. They didn’t look any cleaner than before. A bit of chocolate marred the edge of one lens. Just before she started down the sidewalk, she turned. “You seem like a nice girl. Becky can use all the friends she can find right now. I’m glad she found you.”
As she walked away, I whispered, “Me too.”